#ngl I was taken aback by the state of the shipdom rn

[pancakejikook]

So, I used to pretty active here, some of you might remember me. I'm not an army anymore but I still have a soft spot for jikook so I occasionally check on what they've been up to, but I don't delve deep at all and miss a lot of stuff. In the past few days however I was overcome by a sudden jikook-missing wave and started going through some of my tags from when my blog was active which made me miss them even more (and also made me realize that the overwhelming majority of the blogs I used to reblog from have since deactivated or just stopped posting/turned their blogs into something else, which was a bit sad). So I went to the jikook tag and started browsing a bit to see what was going on in the shipdom. I was a bit surprised to see how little activity there is in the tag compared to a few years ago, and there seems to be quite a mess going on: extremely polarized views compared to before, dubious amounts of delulu theories, and especially a lot of jikookers dropping the ship for one reason or another, although most or the reasons given make little sense to me (yes, I did see THAT post and all I'm gonna say is.. yikes). And like, you do you. We don't have to agree on everything. You know more than I do anyway lol, since I don't follow jikook closely. But there was one specific thing that kinda baffled me. The JM tattoo discourse. I'm late to the party, I know. I'm sure a lot was said at the time, but I wasn't around back then checking the tag. I was vaguely aware that jk talked about his tattoos in a live, and claimed the ARMY tattoo on his hand referred to armys (duh) and the J referred to Jungkook (makes sense). I literally didn't think anything of it at all at the time, I just thought it was nice of him to explain the meaning of his tats. But while scrolling through the jikook tag these past few days I realized that quite a lot of people considered that to be some sort of "debunking" that the JM stands for Jimin, sometimes to the point of dropping the ship because of it, or considering it the ultimate proof that jikookers have lost it if they still believe it stands for jimin and are now moving like teakookers or whatever. And I'm just, confused. I was like where is the debunking. Now. I'm not one for delulu theories. I think they can be fun sometimes, and I used to reblog some of them from time to time but for the most part I just thought they were cringe and always preferred to focus on jikook's actual actions and words (I never really actually cared if they were "real" or not, I just love their relationship and have enough reasons to believe they have feelings for each other and are attracted to each other, but how they deal with these feelings and attraction isn't really any of my business). However, the JM thing. I wasn't even aware it was considered a theory. For me it's just.. there. His ring finger literally spells out JM. Not a theory, it's a fact. Jk knows that JM is frequently used to refer to jimin, we literally have abundant proof of it. Jimin knows it. Armys know it. So unless you think Jungkook is a complete idiot who has somewhat never realized how that's gonna be perceived (which is possible I guess, but very unlikely), it was obviously deliberate. However, I never, ever, ever for a second thought that Jungkook would ever "confirm" it verbally one day. I see it as a statement on its own, that doesn't require an explanation and will never get one because it doesn't need one. It's just there, it speaks for itself, you can just choose whether you wanna see it or ignore it. So I was just puzzled to see people think there was any "debunking" going on. He didn't lie. Of course the M is part of ARMY. Of course the J is for Jungkook. But the JM is still for Jimin. He's not gonna say it because there is no need for him to. In a way, it's comparable to gcft. It's all there for everyone to see, and he knows it, but he's never gonna spell it out. He's never gonna say this is my love declaration for Jimin in video format. He doesn't need to, you'll see it on your own if you're open to it.

I really mean no offense but I feel that sometimes some people go so hard with the whole "I am SKEPTICAL because I'm smart and not a delulu shipper like you and I don't wanna be associated with you clowns" that it ends up circling back to being delusional except in the opposite direction. Apparently some of you genuinely think he just happened to put the J above the M, on his ring finger, and it just HAPPENS to read JM vertically. He also concidentally happens to never cover up the J with rings, and regularly gets the JM touched up but not the other letters (and I DID think jikookers were being delusional about this at first, but it kept happening and became undeniable so what was the point of denying it, I thought). All a coincidence. It doesn't mean anything, because Jungkook pointed out the obviousness of ARMY meaning his fandom and J meaning Jungkook. Did I miss something huge here?

#jikook #I can't believe I'm engaging in jikook discourse in the year of 2023 but here I am apparently #ngl I was taken aback by the state of the shipdom rn #I'd have many things to say but I doubt anyone would be interested #but this specific thing about the tattoo really rubbed me the wrong way #so I decided to address it #but seriously did I miss something? #was there a follow up where jk categorically claimed no the jm doesn't stand for jimin?? #will probably delete later